Question

I have the below which disables all hyperlinks but after an event I want to enable them back all again, how can I do this?

$("a").click(function() { return false; });

I don’t think its as simple as just setting it to true. 😉

Thanks all

Answer 1

Instead of binding your “click” handler that way, do this:

$('a').bind("click.myDisable", function() { return false; });

Then when you want to remove that handler it’s easy:

$('a').unbind("click.myDisable");

That way you avoid messing up other stuff that might be bound to “click”. If you just unbind “click”, you unbind everything bound to that event.

edit in 2014 — the way you bind events now is with .on():

$('a').on('click.myDisable', function() { return false; });

Probably it’d be better to do this:

$('a').on('click.myDisable', function(e) { e.preventDefault(); });

To unbind:

$('a').off('click.myDisable');

Finally, you could bind a handler to the document body and deal with <a> tags that are dynamically added:

$('body').on('click.myDisable', 'a', function(e) { e.preventDefault(); });

// to unbind

$('body').off('click.myDisable');